- What is language? What is culture? What role do they play in your life? How does language relate (or not) to cultural difference?
- What misperceptions about your own cultures have you noticed? Are these misconceptions ostensibly connected to language(s)?
- What challenges do you face in terms of cross-cultural interaction?
Language is how different groups communicate with one another, and culture is a group of people with similar backgrounds and traditions, which may include language. Language and culture are pretty big to me, coming from an immigrant family. My parents both grew up in China, and moved to the US in 1996. My brother was even born in China in 1989 and lived there until he was 6. At home, I speak Chinese, and pretty much only Chinese, to my parents out of respect. Pretty much everywhere else I speak English. Language, in this sense, relates to cultural difference. I prefer to speak English, while my parents prefer to speak Chinese, and given I grew up in the US while they grew up in China, that makes sense.
The Chinese are often villified and made fun of within American culture. There’s a lot to list here, from eating weird animals (some of which is true, but only for a select few), to males being submissive, to size of genetalia, etc. I don’t think these are usually tied to language, except for maybe how Chinese people are racist because of the phrase 那个, which sounds like the n-word.
I feel like I do pretty well when it comes to facing different cultures. In high school, I learned to respect other cultures and other languages, so I try my best not to completely assume somethign about someone. Of course, this means a lot of my actions are very general, but coming from a cross-cultural background, I feel like I know how to act across cultures.